When the town officials of Centralia, Pennsylvania ordered a small landfill cleared out in May of 1962, they had no idea what they were getting into. The method of clearing this landfill was to burn the rubbish and waste it contained. There was one snag in this situation though – Centralia was a coal mining town, and there was a hole in the wall of the landfill that led directly to an underground deposit of anthracite coal. This was ignited by the small fire, lighting the first flames of a blaze which has burned now for nearly 40 years.
Initially, this was not considered a major problem. Residents and government officials assumed that stopping the fire would be a simple matter of shoveling out the burning coal. They were dreadfully wrong. In Centralia’s recent history, a highway has been destroyed and the majority of the town’s residents have evacuated the area, leaving it almost totally abandoned.
Centralia was founded in the 1860’s, although it was then known as “Bull’s Head,” since the Bull’s Head Tavern was the only building in the town. By 1865, other businesses and residents had moved in and dubbed the town Centerville. Since there was already a Centerville, PA, the Post Office insisted that the name be changed, and Centralia (meaning Center of Commerce) was decided upon. The presence of anthracite drew mining families from across the nation, since it is a rare, valuable form of coal which makes up only two percent of the nation’s reserves. By 1962, the town, just 120 miles northwest of Philadelphia, had a population of 1,100 people, most of them members of families with generations of mining experience.
These days, under thirty residents remain. In the mid-1980’s the United States government offered to buy the property from the residents of the town, and most jumped at the chance. A handful of stragglers refused to budge, and sentiment among them is that the government simply wants to clear everyone out, then it will spend the estimated 663 million dollars it will take to put the fire out, gaining the mine as government property. In 1991 the state actually bought these peoples’ homes, but they are still living there and paying property taxes. Besides these hardliners, most people who visit the town are scientists or curious onlookers.
The fire itself is not a stationary beast. It moves rapidly underground, terrorizing not only Centralia but occasionally the neighboring town of Byrnesville. A team of researchers from nearby Susquehanna University has set up camp at Centralia to study the phenomenon with funding from the National Science Foundation’s “Life in Extreme Environments” program (which also studies such locales as Antarctica and the Yellowstone geysers.)
While no one has died due to the fires of Centralia, media attention focused on the burning burg in 1981, when it nearly claimed the life of teenager Todd Domboski. It seems the lad was simply minding his own business when a fiery crater four feet wide opened up directly beneath him. It was 150 feet deep and filled with carbon monoxide and other noxious gasses. Domboski clung to roots along the side of the fiery fissure and his cousin managed to save his life. The hellish situation brought national press coverage to the town’s plight.
There are no plans by government agencies to further fight the blaze. In essence, Centralia is being left to burn itself out. With 3,700 acres of coal underneath the town, experts estimate that the fire will have enough fuel to burn for nearly a thousand more years. With its numerous abandoned homes and businesses, it seems that Centralia’s only hope of ever coming back to life is if the hell beneath it literally freezes over.
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